Oil spill worsens as explosion risk delays clean-up

Peter Ker, Nick Butterly and Michael Bennett

A DANGEROUS oil spill off the far north coast of Western Australian will take at least seven weeks to clean up and cost the company that owns the drilling rig tens of millions of dollars.

PPTEP Australasia, a Thai company, also faces possible charges if it is found to have acted outside environmental approvals.

The company will bring in special equipment to cap the broken well as oil and gas continue to spew into the sea from the West Atlas rig, 250 kilometres off the Kimberley coast.

Experts say it could cost the company up to $20 million to bring the spill under control using a second rig brought in from Singapore because the risk of an explosive fire is so great it is too dangerous to send a team aboard.

The oil slick, which is estimated to be between eight and 15 kilometres long, is not expected to reach the mainland.

The company said yesterday that the second rig would drill a relief well near the existing well that it hopes will intersect with the broken wellhead so it can be capped with concrete.

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A PTTEP director, Jose Martins, said the second-well option had the best chance of success. The well was ''most likely'' to flow for the next seven weeks, he said. ''We're not sure exactly what caused any fracture or any leakage.''

Mr Martins said that although the well would continue to flow, the spill was ''contained and localised in the area'' and the company would pay for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority to oversee the environmental impact.

It is expected to take 20 days to tow the rig from Singapore and a further four weeks to cap the flow. The spill, caused by a leak in the well-bore on the seabed, began on Friday morning.

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Chemicals have been rushed from Geelong to Darwin by air and road to help break down the slick. A Hercules aircraft, borrowed from an oil spill response company in Singapore, spent most of yesterday spraying dispersal chemicals on to the slick.

Authorities said the spraying had worked well, even though the aircraft had to contend with a two-nautical-mile exclusion zone around the rig to minimise the risk of fire.

An Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman, Tracey Jiggins, said spraying a dispersant chemical on the oil spill had reduced the size of the slick.

''All indications are that stopping the leak of the oil is going to take considerable time,'' she said. ''Until the company can stop the leak of oil we are going to prevent it from damaging the environment.''

The Australian Marine Conservation Society said the spill was in an important nursery ground and migration route for whales and turtles and called for more areas off limits to oil and gas exploration.